"Pronged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a faint and distant glimmering of reason. The man to whom the order for the oysters had been sent, had not been told to open them; it is a very difficult thing to open an oyster with a limp knife and a two-pronged fork; and very little was done in this way. Very little of the beef was done either; and the ham (which was also from the German-sausage shop round the corner) was in a similar predicament. However, there was plenty of porter in a tin can; ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... officers on my right and a few chamberlains at intervals on my left I advanced very slowly and, I hope, with a certain dignity. I saw the train of my colleague turn the corner around the officers. Two other lackeys darted forth and pronged my train in place. I made my courtesy first to the Emperor and then to the Empress, who stood at ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... around the fire were busily engaged toasting "Weiners" for the feast, which was finally pronounced ready to be partaken of. The hungry girls "fell to" and everything eatable disappeared as if by magic; and last, but not least, was the toasting of marshmallows, speared on the points of long, two-pronged sticks (broken from near-by trees), which were held over the fire until the marshmallows turned a delicate color. When everything had been eaten, with the exception of several cardboard boxes, corn cobs and husks, the girls quickly cleared up. Then, seated ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... handles squar'd cost 4s. 6d." In 1738 Peter Fanueil ordered one dozen silver forks from England, "with three prongs, with my arms cut upon them, made very neat and handsome." One Boston citizen had in 1719 six four-pronged forks, an early example of that fashion. In 1737 shagreen cases with ivory-handled forks were advertised; bone, japanned metal, wood, and horn handles also appeared—all, of course, with metal prongs. Sir Francis Bernard had in 1770 three cases of china-handled ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... as I've engaged to do the honors, shall I have the pleasure of bathing with you when the fun begins? As you are fond of hay-making, I suppose you intend to pay your respects to the old gentleman with the three-pronged pitchfork?" ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass. If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the water's edge, the flat was unbroken ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... third! At last I caught sight of what I made sure was it—a fine large vessel just casting off her moorings. The taffrail was green. Three masts—yes, that must be it—and the gilt figurehead of Hercules. To be sure, it had a three-pronged pitchfork in its hand instead of a club; but that might be my uncle's mistake, or perhaps Hercules sometimes varied his weapons. 'Cast off!' roared a voice from the quarter-deck. 'Hold on!' cried I, rushing frantically through the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... red earth swamped by a huge mass of stones, has received a rough first attempt at cultivation: I am told that vines once grew here. And, in fact, when we dig the ground before planting a few trees, we turn up, here and there, remains of the precious stock, half carbonized by time. The three-pronged fork, therefore, the only implement of husbandry that can penetrate such a soil as this, has entered here; and I am sorry, for the primitive vegetation has disappeared. No more thyme, no more lavender, no more clumps of kermes-oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests across which we step by lengthening ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... perceptible as they passed near me. When they had set it down in full view of all and near the tribunal one of them shook out and folded four-thick a thin Spanish blanket of harsh wiry wool and spread the square of it by the brazier, squatting on it to tend the coals with a long- handled five pronged altar-hook. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... to Lingheath, not far off, and what do we find? A family of the name of Dyer carry on to-day exactly the same old method of mining. Their pits are of squarer shape than the neolithic ones, but otherwise similar. Their one-pronged pick retains the shape of the deer's antler. Their light is a candle stuck in a cup of chalk. And the ladder is just a series of ledges or, as they call them, "toes" in the wall, five feet apart and connected by foot-holes. The miner simply jerks ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... to make the cracking of a snow-laden spruce-bough resound like a pistol-shot. For Denver and the dwellers on the eastern plain the sun is an hour high; but the hamlet mining-camp of Argentine, with its dovecote railway station and two-pronged siding, still lies in the steel-blue depths of the ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... nodded. "Certainly," he said. "And I hope you will not find it uninteresting," he added modestly. "Our muniment room is particularly rich in ancient records, and I have some genuinely new light to throw on the introduction of the three-pronged fork." ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... inches beyond the surface. The club had a total length of five feet and weighed about eight pounds. The second division of the wild-looking band consisted of three spear-men, each provided with the three-pronged spears, a horrible weapon which always proves fatal in the hands of these savages. It is a long straight shaft of Caripari wood, about one inch in thickness, divided into three parts at the end, each division being tipped with a barbed bone of the sting-ray. These bones, about three ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... some village fields, in holidays now getting stupid, One day sauntering long and listless, as Tennyson has it, Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbydihoyhood, Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless bonnetless maiden, Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes. Was it the air? who can say? or herself? or the charm of the labor? But a new thing was in me, and longing delicious possessed me, Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... of oysters that have been removed from the shells are dropped into a stemmed glass containing the cocktail sauce, and the glass is placed in a bowl of cracked ice. An oyster fork, which is a small, three-pronged fork, is always served with raw oysters, and usually a piece of lemon is supplied in addition ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... will be able to find her mama's palace; for there is a fountain in front of it in which there is a stone man with a three-pronged fork, and a stone lady with a fish-tail! Oh, yes; we shall be sure to find it; and very soon we shall be ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... be put in order, and we will deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water blessed. That will help them to get ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... It was pleasant to the back standing there, with one foot resting upon the great five-pronged fork; and as he stood with his fingers on the handle, he kept his left arm across his loins, and gave Tom ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... attention of a shark that was swimming guard over his friend, and both escaped unhurt; but still, despite their utmost skill, accidents do often occur. In shallow water the 'beche-de-mer' is caught with a five-pronged instrument, resembling an eel-spear. The animals are split open, boiled, pressed flat, and dried in the sun, and after a sufficient number have been taken, they are carried to the island rendezvous and there smoked with dry wood, which last ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... affirmative nod for an answer retired into the dark kitchen. In a moment he returned with a huge earthenware plate of soup in which a couple of large pieces of fat meat bobbed lazily as he set the dish on the table. Then he brought bread, a measure of wine, an iron spoon, and a two-pronged fork. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... galleries bored by some wood-eating larva in the trunk of a dead wild pear-tree, galleries afterwards utilized for the cells of an Osmia, I do not know which. Lastly, I found a pair of them in between the row of cocoons of the Three-pronged Osmia (O. tridentata, DUF.), who provides a home for her larvae in a channel dug in the dry bramble stems. The insect in question therefore is a parasite of the Osmiae. When I extract it from the old Chalicodoma-nests, I have to attribute it not to this Bee but to one of the Osmiae ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... dejectedly against one of the pronged cedar posts on the tiny stoop, was a spectre figure, ghastly of countenance—Judd's. The doctor read in it the awful anguish of uncertainty which had driven the mountaineer, against his will, back to the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... test. Our dinner was served in Chinese fashion, but most of the luxuries, such as beche-de-mer, were very old and bad. We ate, sometimes with chop-sticks, and at others with Tibetan spoons, knives, and two-pronged forks. After the usual amount of messes served in oil and salt water, sweets were brought, and a strong spirit. Thoba-sing, our filthy, cross-eyed spy, was waiter, and brought in every little dish with both ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of fare, that the very genteel waiter attending us had few distinct ideas beyond them. He was part of the repairs and improvements which that hostelry had recently undergone, and had evidently come in with the four-pronged forks, the chromo-lithographs of Victor Emanuel, Garibaldi, Solferino, and Magenta in the large dining-room, and the iron stove in the small one. He had nothing, evidently, in common with the brick floors ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... should be thirty-knotted, and the interval of the nooses the same as in the ordinary small nets. At the elbow ends (12) the road net should be furnished with nipples (13) (or eyes), and the larger sort (the haye) with rings, and both alike with a running line of twisted cord. The pronged stakes (14) for the small nets should be ten palms high, (15) as a rule, but there should be some shorter ones besides; those of unequal length will be convenient to equalise the height on uneven ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... tilting lance with vamplate used in tournaments in the sixteenth century. The wood pole is covered with cloth or painted a dark color. At the end is a four-pronged piece of steel. The vamplate can be made of cardboard covered with tinfoil to represent steel and studded with brass nails. The ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the alphabet which that people perfected remains. The shepherd kings of Israel, the temple and empire of Solomon, have gone the way of all the earth, but the Old Testament has been preserved for the inspiration of mankind. The ark of the covenant and the seven-pronged candlestick have passed from human view; the inhabitants of Judea have been dispersed to the ends of the earth, but the New Testament has survived and increased in its influence among men. The glory of Athens and Sparta, the grandeur of the Imperial ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Poets appropriated. Both the towers on the sea-coast, and the beacons, which stood above them, had the name of Tor-ain. This the Grecians changed to Triaina, [Greek: Triaina], and supposed it to have been a three-pronged fork. The beacon, or Torain, consisted of an iron or brazen frame, wherein were three or four tines, which stood up upon a circular basis of the same metal. They were bound with a hoop; and had either the figures of Dolphins, or else foliage in the intervals between them. These filled ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... into England. This elegant revolution occurred about 240 years ago; and never since that day have there been wanting English protesters against the infamy of eating without forks; and for the last 160 years, at least, against the paganism of using steel forks; or, 2dly, two- pronged forks; or, 3dly, of putting the knife into the mouth. At least 120 years ago, the Duchess of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess,) that leonine woman, used to shriek out, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas to his abominable mouth on the point of a knife. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a two-pronged stick about four feet long, decorated with wild sage. It was smooth and had no bark, and was brought out only once a year, for the Sun-dance. The keeper of it used it for beating time, in the dance. At the close of the dance it was stuck, forks ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... who thinks it waste of money to pay for a gun-license, and a waste of opportunities to respect the breeding season. If he is a fisher, he not only scoffs at the close time, but uses illegal means to achieve his purpose, such as nets with meshes smaller than they should be, and the three-pronged spear. In the Tarn and other French rivers the fish have been destroyed in a woeful manner by poison and dynamite, but it is the rock-blaster and the navvy, not the regular poacher, who is chiefly to be blamed for this. Men who have the constant handling of dynamite, and who ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... other technical cultures; among experimental physicists and hardware engineers of various kinds it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of {frob}). It has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit together in an ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Bruinic majesty, and calmly awaited his approach. Intent upon making a meal of blueberries, and entirely unconscious of his impending fate, he waddled slowly and awkwardly up to within fifty yards. The Karnchadals kneeled down, threw forward their long heavy rifles, fixed their sharp-pronged rests firmly in the ground, crossed themselves devoutly three times, drew a long breath, took a deadly and deliberate aim, shut their eyes, and fired. The silence was broken by a long fizzle, during which the Kamchadals conscientiously kept their eyes shut, and finally a terrific ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan |
